


rebel songs

by thehandsingsweapon



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Background Victuuri - Freeform, Bisexual Mila Babicheva, Bisexuality, Diary/Journal, F/F, F/M, Lesbian Sara Crispino, Self-Discovery, YOI Pride Week, and also making some bad choices, canon-adjacent poetry, early saramila, first person POV, mila is an eighteen year old having some fun, rink gossip abounds, victor and christophe are in the background being terrible gay uncles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-05-27 22:24:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 2,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15034604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehandsingsweapon/pseuds/thehandsingsweapon
Summary: Mila Babicheva learns about herself, sometimes with the help of others.A set of canon-adjacent poems for YOI Pride Week.





	1. a letter you will never read

**_A Letter You Will Never Read  
_ ** _ (“Mila and the Hockey Player”) _

 

Here it is, my confession:

I liked you because I was  _ supposed _ to like you.

We were close friends, neighbors --  
children who were always at the rink.  
I’d like to think you probably know  
how the narrative goes:  
strong, athletic boy; pretty, exuberant girl.

Not to mention the high-school sweethearts angle:  
the figure skater, the hockey captain.

Even back then, I learned:  
how to think nothing of the voice,  
the thing which always whispered   
_ I don’t think you like him  
_ _ as much as you should, baba. _

But people seemed to like me more  
whenever I stood adjacent to you.

I guess Babushka tried to tell me  
with her crazy, double-edged stories:  
you know the kind; they always leave scars.  
Some of them about the bad girls,  
with boys between their legs too soon;  
others about the spinsters,  
too choosy or too ugly,  
rendered useless in the marketplace  
which women’s feelings are traded in. 

I developed coping mechanisms, fantasies;  
other boys and other girls to think about kissing  
in the wild sacred space of my daydreams. 

You threw yourself headlong into early alcoholism,  
and ruined any possibility of an NHL career.

Dima, I guess what I’m trying to say is:  
I was never in love with you.

I’m not sure who I’m supposed to be in love with,  
but I hope when I find them,  
my soul will sing:

With freedom  
With purpose. 

 


	2. the stone in sara's mouth

_The Stone in Sara’s Mouth_

In my college classes, I’ve learned that in some countries,  
witches were once pressed between stone.

Our torture devices have gotten so sophisticated now.

In very few places anymore do you find  
that kind of violence

But there are still ways to put a soul out of joint.

Sara Crispino once did an interview with her brother:  
_“Any boys wishing you luck back home?”_

He went nuclear; he always does.  
But I was watching **her.**

Her small, tight smile  
her thin lips  
two stones  
with her heart  
pressed between them.

I kissed her tonight,  
and still she wants to know:  
_Is this okay?_  
Like either of us  
need permission  
to be ourselves.

 


	3. Legendary Playboy Victor Nikiforov Says Yes

_Legendary Playboy Victor Nikiforov Says Yes_

He says it happened by accident.

That’s hilarious, if you really know Victor Nikiforov,  
a man who hasn’t made mistakes since he was thirteen.

His lapses of memory are precisely calculated:  
like his airhead persona, or the playboy wink,  
deployed whenever there’s a complicated problem  
that he’d prefer to quadruple flip away from.

Next summer, Legendary Playboy Victor Nikiforov  
is set to tie the knot with Gay Disaster Yuuri Katsuki.  
Yuuri has been in love with Victor since Victor became _Victor_ ;  
Victor has been in love with Yuuri since Yuuri got drunk that one time  
and dry-humped him in front of the who’s-who of figure skating.

They are so in love it makes Yuri Plisetsky sick,  
in that transparently-sick-with-envy sort of way.

I have skated at Yubileyny with Victor for three years,  
and never, did I ever, think he would say _yes_.

It is such a strange word.

 _Yes_ puts your deepest commitments out in the open,  
makes them available for public consumption,  
and the kind of scrutiny you can usually avoid  
if you’ve managed to turn yourself into a legend,  
(or you’ve carefully concocted a string of media myths  
crafted just to throw reporters off your own trail).

 _Yes_ is co-mingled with complicated ideas;  
words like _forever,_ which is a very long time,  
and _family,_ which for Yuuri and Victor  
will be rather less biological mandate --

 _(my Grandmother will be very disappointed  
_ _to hear that Victor Nikiforov will not be producing_  
Russian Hero Children with a Strong Russian Wife)

\-- and more bureaucratic obstacle-course  
conducted in a pit of vipers  
while also running a marathon.

Not everyone gets to say _yes_ ,  
when and where they want;  
and not everyone wants to.

It wasn’t that I thought Victor was that sort.  
He’s a romantic; it suffuses everything he touches.

Except he also has that other Midas curse,  
_Living Legend,_ the one he gave himself.  
And _yes_ seems like it requires a certain vulnerability;  
a willingness to be mortal for just the one person  
over and over and over again.

So anyway, I half believe him, when he tells me

\-- sneaking shots of vodka together out the side door  
where Yakov turns a blind eye to us both,  
because Victor is alone, and his Yuuri  
competing at another Nationals,  
on another continent --

that love wasn’t something he meant to fall into.

Then I remember he’s Victor Nikiforov,  
that he doesn’t make mistakes.

I remember that when Yuuri Katsuki  
crash-landed into his arms that one night,  
somehow Victor must have decided _yes,  
__for you, I can be a human again._

Because he said _yes_ when he bought the plane ticket  
and he said _yes_ again when he begged Yakov  
to put him back on our roster.

He has said _yes_ a thousand times by now.

He is still saying _yes_ even now,  
speaking of Yuuri with that smile  
that only Yuuri, only _ever_ Yuuri  
has put on his face.

It is a smile that you cannot look at  
without thinking about _yes,_ yourself;  
that _yes_ is a magical word,  
the kind of thing anyone has the right to say  
to whomever they want, whenever, however.

Together fumbling into the spell of this singular word --

 _Yes_ and _Yes_ and _Yes_ and _Yes._

 


	4. A Few Beautiful People

_ A Few Beautiful People _

Lilia is at her most beautiful   
the first time she reveals  
a new piece of choreography.

Because of her, I understand why myths of dawn  
have so often involved thundering chariots  
vehicles that require strength and discipline.

I think, maybe, it's because carrying the sun  
is an ambitious choice and a hard one;  
and it takes a person who has chosen  
to be a force to be reckoned with.

Yakov is rarely beautiful on the outside.  
It happens sometimes, like the sliver of an eclipse;  
his great big bear hugs in the Kiss & Cry,  
or the fact that if you ever need a ride  
from some dire, desperate place  
at three in the morning  
Yakov Feltsman will come get you  
in his older-than-it-really-needs-to-be,   
beat-up, worn-down car --   
\-- no questions asked.

The two of them are old gods,  
and they have an old god kind of love,  
the sort that’s dangerous,  
the kind that leaves a mark.   


Vitya is most beautiful when he skates,  
but it’s the wrong sort of beautiful,  
a fey illusion from a changeling child.  
He is dangerous on the ice;  
look too closely and you’ll see it --   
\-- the warning, shark-toothed smile.

He is most himself walking his dog with his lover,  
alongside the Neva on a crisp, clear morning  
while the light is still luminous -- and his smile,   
still soft, still something that belongs to only one other.

Yura is still learning  
how and when to really be himself.  
It comes in flits and sparks,   
appropriate for an angry boy  
with a cigarette lighter  
who is ready to catch fire.

For some he will be a forest fire,  
too much, scorched earth.  
For others, a bonfire, a beacon;  
only a select few will know him  
as a campfire story.  
A safe circle;  
a warm place to call home.

I’m writing about them to say that  
there’s more than one way  
to love what you love.


	5. Yuri Plisetsky Gives No Fucks

_ Yuri Plisetsky Gives No Fucks _

“So you broke up with the hockey player, huh.”

That’s classic Yura for you;  
no beating around the bush.  
He’s kind like an alley cat,  
too many sticks and stones,  
like Bukowski says,  
knives instead of flowers.  
He’s always angry,  
keeping an eye out  
for the next person  
who’s gonna leave him.

_ Yeah,  _ I tell him.  
_ Dima’s out of the picture. _

“Good,” he decides,  
though I don’t need  
his permission;  
both of us always do  
whatever we want.

“What now?”

_ I dunno,  _ I say.  _ Maybe gonna --  
_ _ \-- see some other people,   
_ __ have a little fun, you know?

“People,” says Yuratchka.

_ People,  _ I confirm.  
For too long now,  
there’s been a question  
locked up in my body  
and I’m going to figure it out.

“Cool,” he says.  
“People,” he says.  
“Whatever,” he says.

This is Yuri Plisetsky’s way of telling me  
that he doesn’t care, or rather:  
that he does care, but not about this.

Some days I am not sure what I did,  
to deserve him and Vitya.

Some days I mean it like a curse;  
some days, like this one, a benediction.

 


	6. There Ain’t A Wrong Way To Have A Body

_ There Ain’t A Wrong Way To Have A Body _

It’s something that JJ told me once, putting on a show,  
faking one of those American-cowboy accents -- 

_ Mila Babicheva,  _ he said,  _ There Ain’t A Wrong Way To Have A Body. _

JJ who always runs around like he’s compensating for something,  
so much that I’ve made a bet with Beka, who’s known him the longest,  
that he and Isabella are going to wind up swingers.

I made the mistake of telling Vitya about it, once,  
and he got all sly and superior and smirky:  
_thinking about taking them up on it later?_

Which --

\-- Well, yeah, okay.  _ Maybe.  _ Except Yura’s right about them, too:  
JJ won’t ever learn how to shut his trap for thirty minutes,  
and a girl has to have her standards.

Gosha is as straight as they come,  
waiting on his one world-shattering, life-changing love,  
and having at least three of them a year in the interim.  
It doesn’t stop him from seeing, clear-eyed,  
that Yuuri and Victor have the thing that he wants,  
and he’s learning, watching Victor, to look for a love  
that maybe this time will nourish and sustain.

Yura acts like he knows everything there is to know about sex already,  
which is the surest way to be certain that the boy knows nothing.

The problem -- the question -- is that Sara likes girls.  
Sara likes their soft skin, and their curls, and me;  
even though I’m knees and elbows still,  
full of foul words and bad temper.

Sometimes I like Sara, which somehow only Christophe knows;  
Christophe Giacometti, the gayest fairy godfather any of us could have,  
the man who groped Yuuri Katsuki’s ass in front of Vitya, in public,  
and must have receipts enough, or know where the bodies are buried,  
because he still lives to tell the tale.

Sara is older than me, more serious, sometimes;  
like Christophe’s distinguished-looking, steady partner,  
the one who is somehow surprisingly fine with a relationship  
that seems to exist, to us outsiders, without bounds or borders

__ Yeah, but how does he put up with it,  
I want to know, because I’m not ready yet,  
for  _ Serious,  _ and definitely not  __ Yes,  
and maybe not even for someone like Sara,

Which is exactly when Christophe grins his wolf-grin at me, all-knowing, and says:  
_Mila Babicheva, Ain’t A Wrong Way To Have A Body._

This has been a story about all of them,  
but mostly I had to tell it  
to explain to Yuuri Katsuki  
why I chased his gossiping fiancee,  
howling, around the rink  
for a solid and unforgiving  
thirteen laps.


	7. which of us is ever really ready

_ which of us is ever really ready _

 

We are riotously drunk  
not on whiskey or wine.

We are drunk on ourselves:  
we are brilliant and bold;  
we are beautiful and brave.

Christophe keeps sending snaps  
from the parade in Lugano;  
every year his costumes get  
more and more ridiculous.

Although they’re not really ridiculous at all.  
They are Christophe, as he is, when he is  
most fully and brilliantly himself.

Besides, we all know that later he will be at home  
with a book and a cat and his boyfriend;  
forever balanced on a life that he’s crafted  
out of these two halves of himself.

Vitya won’t stop smiling.  
He’s holding Yuuri’s hand,  
and sweeping him into  
dramatic, backbent kisses  
every time someone yells _gorka_ \--  
\-- a joke _he_ started,  
insisting they practice  
prior to the wedding.

Georgi is here with his new girlfriend,  
who, he tells me, wants to take it slow --  
\-- __she thinks she’s demi, I guess,  
He says, and then he asks me  
what that even means,  
But laughs, good-natured, clean  
when I remind him that I’m no expert.

Yura says he’s here for me,  
but there’s a contemplative glint in his eyes  
when he studies all of the flags,  
like in a year or two he’ll have it all figured out  
and know where he fits.

And Sara is here. Sara came here.  
Sara is in a pink dress;  
one of the femmes,  
unapologetically herself.

___I’m not really ready for you,_  
I admit, when our hands  
inevitably tangle.

Sara smiles her radiant smile and asks:  
“Which of us is ever really ready?”


End file.
